Introduction
Ti.
Claudius Nero Germanicus (b. 10 BC, d. 54 A.D.;
emperor, 41-54 A.D.) was the third emperor of the
Julio-Claudian dynasty. His reign represents a
turning point in the history of the Principate for a
number of reasons, not the least for the manner of
his accession and the implications it carried for
the nature of the office. During his reign he
promoted administrators who did not belong to the
senatorial or equestrian classes, and was later
vilified by authors who did. He followed Caesar in
carrying Roman arms across the English Channel into
Britain but, unlike his predecessor, he initiated
the full-scale annexation of Britain as a province,
which remains today the most closely studied corner
of the Roman Empire. His relationships with his
wives and children provide detailed insights into
the perennial difficulties of the succession problem
faced by all Roman Emperors. His final settlement in
this regard was not lucky: he adopted his fourth
wife's son, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, who was to
reign catastrophically as Nero and bring the dynasty
to an end. Claudius's reign, therefore, was a
mixture of successes and failures that leads into
the last phase of the Julio-Claudian line.
Early Life (10 BC - 41 A.D. )
Claudius was born on 1 August 10 BC at Lugdunum in
Gaul, into the heart of the Julio-Claudian dynasty:
he was the son of Drusus Claudius Nero, the son of
Augustus's wife Livia, and Antonia, the daughter of
Mark Antony. [[1]] His uncle, Tiberius, went on to
become emperor in AD 14 and his brother Germanicus
was marked out for succession to the purple when, in
AD 4, he was adopted by Tiberius. It might be
expected that Claudius, as a well-connected imperial
prince, would have enjoyed the active public life
customary for young men of his standing but this was
not the case. In an age that despised weakness,
Claudius was unfortunate enough to have been born
with defects. He limped, he drooled, he stuttered
and was constantly ill. [[2]] His family members
mistook these physical debilities as reflective of
mental infirmity and generally kept him out of the
public eye as an embarrassment. A sign of this
familial disdain is that he remained under
guardianship, like a woman, even after he had
reached the age of majority. Suetonius, in
particular, preserves comments of Antonia, his
mother, and Livia, his grandmother, which are
particularly cruel in their assessment of the boy.
From the same source, however, it emerges that
Augustus suspected that there was more to this
"idiot" than met the eye.[[3]] Nevertheless,
Claudius spent his entire childhood and youth in
almost complete seclusion. The normal rites de
passage of an imperial prince came and went without
official notice, and Claudius received no summons to
public office or orders to command troops on the
frontiers.[[4]] When he assumed the toga virilis,
for instance, he was carried to the Capitol in a
litter at night; the normal procedure was to be led
into the Forum by one's father or guardian in full
public view. How he spent the voluminous free time
of his youth is revealed by his later character: he
read voraciously. He became a scholar of
considerable ability and composed works on all
subjects in the liberal arts, especially history; he
was the last person we know of who could read
Etruscan. [[5]] These skills, and the knowledge of
governmental institutions he acquired from studying
history, were to stand him in good stead when he
came to power.
It should not be forgotten that Claudius's wing of
the family suffered terribly in the internal
struggles for succession that racked the imperial
house. His father died on campaign when Claudius was
only one year old, and his beloved brother,
Germanicus, succumbed under suspicious circumstances
in AD 19. His only other sibling to reach adulthood,
Livilla, became involved with Sejanus and paid the
ultimate price in the wake of the latter's fall from
grace in AD 31. Through all this turmoil Claudius
survived, primarily through being ignored as an
embarrassment and an idiot.[[6]]
Claudius's fortunes changed somewhat when his
unstable nephew, Gaius (Caligula), came to power in
the spring of 37 A.D. Gaius, it seems, liked to use
his bookish, frail uncle as the butt of cruel jokes
and, in keeping with this pattern of behavior,
promoted him to a suffect consulship on 1 July 37
A.D. At 46 years of age, it was Claudius's first
public office. Despite this sortie into public life,
he seemed destined for a relatively quiet and
secluded dotage when, in January 41, events overtook
him.[[7]] Accession
(24-25 January, 41 A.D.)
Arguably the most important period of Claudius's
reign was its first few hours. The events
surrounding his accession are worthy of detailed
description, since they revealed much about the true
nature of the Augustan Principate.
In the early afternoon of 24 January 41 A.D., the
emperor Gaius was attending a display of dancers in
a theater near the palace. Claudius was present.
Shortly before lunch time, Claudius took his leave
and the emperor decided that he, too, would adjourn
for a bath. As Gaius was making his way down an
isolated palace corridor he was surrounded and cut
down by discontented members of his own bodyguard.
In the aftermath of the assassination -- the first
open murder of a Roman emperor -- there was
widespread panic and confusion. The German elements
of the emperor's bodyguard, who were fiercely loyal
to their chief, went on the rampage and killed
indiscriminately. Soldiers of the larger Praetorian
Guard began looting the imperial palace. According
to the best-known tradition, some Guardsmen found
Claudius cowering behind a curtain and, on the spot,
they declared him their emperor and carried him off
to their camp. In this story, a hapless Claudius
falls into power entirely as a result of accident,
and very much against his will. It is not hard to
see why, with its implicit theme of recusatio
imperii, it is the story of his accession that
Claudius himself favored.[[8]] Vestiges, however,
can be traced of another tradition that paints a
somewhat different picture. In this version, the
Guardsmen meet in their camp and discuss the
situation facing them in light of Gaius's murder.
Their pleasant, city-based terms of military service
were in jeopardy. They needed an emperor. Fixing
their intentions on Claudius as the only surviving
mature member of the Julio-Claudian house, they sent
out a party of troops to find him and bring him back
to their camp so he could be acclaimed emperor,
which is what happened. In this story, the elevation
of Claudius to the purple was a purposeful plan on
the part of the soldiers, even if Claudius remains a
passive and reluctant partner in the whole
process.[[9]] The
possibility has to be entertained that Claudius was
a far more active participant in his own elevation
than either of these traditions let on. There is
just reason to suspect that he may even have been
involved in planning the murder of Gaius -- his
departure from the theater minutes before the
assassination appears altogether too fortuitous.
These possibilities, however, must remain pure
speculation, since the ancient evidence offers
nothing explicit in the way of support for them. On
the other hand, we can hardly expect them to, given
the later pattern of events. The whole issue of
Claudius's possible involvement in the death of
Gaius and his own subsequent acclamation by the
Praetorian Guard must, therefore, remain moot.[[10]]
Despite the
circumstances that brought him there, the hours
following Claudius's arrival at the Praetorian Camp
and his acceptance as emperor by the Senate are
vital ones for the history of the Principate. Events
could have taken a very different course, but that
they worked out as they did speaks volumes as to how
far seven decades of the Augustan Principate had
removed Rome from the possibility of a return to the
so-called free Republic.
News of Gaius's death prompted a meeting of the
Senate. Initially, there was talk of declaring the
Republic restored and dispensing with emperors
altogether. Then, however, various senators began
proposing that they be chosen as the next princeps.
Debate was in progress when news reached the
senators that the Guard had made the decision for
them: Claudius, the soldiers' choice, was sitting in
the Praetorian Camp.[[11]] The main historical
difficulty in what happened next is due to confusion
in Josephus's account (which is the fullest). In one
version, the Senate sent two tribunes to the Camp to
demand that Claudius step down. Once in the Camp,
however, the tribunes were cowed by the ardent
support for Claudius among the soldiers and instead
requested that he come to the Senate to be ratified
as emperor. In Josephus's alternate version,
however, Herod Agrippa is summoned by the senators
and employed as an envoy between the Camp and the
Senate.[[12]] Clearly, Josephus is conveying two
traditions about these events, one Roman (featuring
the tribunes), the other Jewish (highlighting the
role of Herod Agrippa). Suetonius, naturally enough,
follows the Roman tradition, as does Dio in his main
account; interestingly, the latter shows awareness
of some participation on the part of Herod Agrippa
in a later passage.[[13]]
Regardless of how the negotiations were conducted,
the Senate quickly realized it was powerless in the
presence of several thousand armed men supporting
Claudius's candidacy. The impotence that the
esteemed council had experienced time and again when
dealing with the military dynasts of the Late
Republic was once more revealed to all, and the
meeting dissolved with the fate of the Empire left
undecided. When the Senate met again later that
night in the Temple of Jupiter Victor, it found its
numbers much depleted, since many had fled the city
to their country estates. The senators assessed
their military strength: they had three or four
urban cohorts under the command of the City Prefect,
numbering perhaps 3,000 men. With these, they
occupied the Forum and Palatine. Plans were laid to
arm some ex-slaves to provide reinforcements. By
these actions the senators were accepting that
supreme power in post-Augustan Rome could be
achieved only by military force; all questions of
legal niceties were irrelevant. But the Senate could
not control their troops -- they all deserted to the
Praetorian Guard, with whom they shared the
Camp.[[14]] Now
completely powerless, the senators hurried off to
the Praetorian Camp to pay their respects to
Claudius. On 25 January 41 A.D. Claudius was
formally invested with all the powers of the
princeps, becoming Ti. Claudius Caesar Augustus
Germanicus. (Since Claudius had no legal claim to it
whatsoever, the appearance of "Caesar" in his
imperial name marks the first step in this word's
transmutation from a family name to a title denoting
ruler, and so begins a tradition that stretches into
the modern era with "Kaiser," "Czar," and possibly
"Shah.") These events
have been treated in some detail because of their
immense historical importance. Gaius was the first
emperor of Rome to be openly murdered, and
Claudius's accession marks the first overt and
large-scale intrusion of the military into
post-Augustan politics. The basic fact of the
Principate, which had always been implicit in the
Augustan settlement but heretofore carefully
disguised, was now made plain: the emperor's
position ultimately rested not on consensus but on
the swords of the soldiers who paid him homage. From
one perspective, the Principate had been revealed
for what it truly was -- an exercise in managing the
military's loyalties, and not a form of government
rooted in law and consensus. The Senate, in
attempting to block Claudius with troops of their
own, had acquiesced in this structure of power. For
ever afterward, emperors sat on the throne on the
sufferance of the troops they commanded, and a loss
of army loyalty necessarily entailed a loss of
power, usually accompanied by the loss of the
incumbent's life. But the harder lessons in these
realities lay in the future; for the moment order
had been restored, and Claudius embarked on his
reign in relative security.
The Early Years: Britain, Freedmen, and Messalina
(AD 41 - 48)
Among Claudius's first acts was the apprehension and
execution of Gaius's assassins. Whatever his opinion
of their actions, politics and pietas required that
Claudius not be seen to condone men who murdered an
emperor and a member of his own family.[[15]] He
also displayed immediate understanding of the
centrality of the military to his position and
sought to create a military image for himself that
his prior sheltered existence had denied him.
Preparations got under way soon after his accession
for a major military expedition into Britain,
perhaps sparked by an attempted revolt of the
governor of Dalmatia, L. Arruntius Camillus
Scribonianus, in 42 A.D.. The invasion itself,
spearheaded by four legions, commenced in the summer
of 43 and was to last for decades, ultimately
falling short of the annexation of the whole island
(if indeed that was Claudius's final objective at
the outset). This move marked the first major
addition to the territory of the Roman empire since
the reign of Augustus.[[16]] Claudius himself took
part in the campaign, arriving in the war zone with
an entourage of ex-consuls in the late summer of 43
A.D. After a parade at Camulodunum (Colchester) to
impress the natives, he returned to Rome to
celebrate a triumph in 44 A.D. His military
credentials had been firmly established.[[17]]
The sources are united in portraying Claudius as a
dupe to his imperial freedmen advisors as well as to
his wives. It is possible that the hostile stance of
the elite toward Claudius extended back into his
reign -- he was, after all, a usurper who had been
foisted on the aristocrats by the soldiers. If so,
Claudius's reliance on his freedmen may have stemmed
from this circumstance, in that the ex-slaves were
(as far as he was concerned) more trustworthy than
the sullen aristocracy. For whatever reasons, there
is no doubt that Claudius's reign is the first era
of the great imperial freedman. To be sure, the
secretariat had existed before Claudius and members
of it had achieved some prominence (notably Helicon
and Callistus under Gaius), but the rise of powerful
individuals like Narcissus, Polybius, and Pallas was
a distinctive mark of Claudius's reign. The power of
these men was demonstrated early on when the emperor
chose Narcissus as his envoy to the legions as they
hesitated to embark on their invasion of
Britain.[[18]] According to our sources, the
freedmen were frequently to exert less beneficent
influences throughout Claudius's reign.
In 38 A.D. Claudius had married Valeria Messalina, a
scion of a noble house with impressive familial
connections. Messalina bore him a daughter (Octavia,
born in 39) and a son (Britannicus, born in 41): she
was therefore the mother of the heir-apparent and
enjoyed influence for that reason. In the sources,
Messalina is portrayed as little more than a pouting
adolescent nymphomaniac who holds wild parties and
arranges the deaths of former lovers or those who
scorn her advances; and all this while her cuckolded
husband blunders on in blissful ignorance. Recently,
attempts have been made to rehabilitate Messalina as
an astute player of court politics who used sex as a
weapon, but in the end we have little way of knowing
the truth.[[19]] What we can say is that either her
love of parties (on the adolescent model) or her
byzantine scheming (on the able courtier model)
brought her down. While Claudius was away in Ostia
in AD 48, Messalina had a party in the palace in the
course of which a marriage ceremony was performed
(or playacted) between herself and a
consul-designate, C. Silius. Whatever the intentions
behind it, the political ramifications of this folly
were sufficiently grave to cause the summary
execution of Messalina, Silius, and assorted
hangers-on (orchestrated, tellingly, by the freedman
Narcissus).[[20]] Claudius was now without a wife.
The Rise of Agrippina
and Claudius's Death (48-54 A.D.)
In our sources, the death of Messalina is presented
as initiating a scramble among the freedmen, each
wishing to place his preferred candidate at
Claudius's side as the new empress. In the end, it
was Pallas who prevailed when he convinced Claudius
to marry Agrippina the Younger. The marriage took
place within months of Messalina's execution.
Agrippina was a colorful figure with extensive and
far-reaching imperial connections: she was the
daughter of Claudius's brother, Germanicus, and a
sister of Gaius Caligula, by whom she had been
exiled for involvement in the conspiracy of
Gaetulicus; moreover, she had been married before.
She therefore brought to the marriage with Claudius
-- which necessitated a change in the law to allow
uncles to marry their brothers' daughters -- a son,
L. Domitius Ahenobarbus. Agrippina's ambitions for
this son proved the undoing of Claudius.[[21]]
The years between his marriage to Agrippina in 48
and his death in 54 were difficult ones for
Claudius. Whether or not sources are right to
portray him as a dupe of his wives and freedmen
throughout his reign, there can be little doubt that
Agrippina's powerful personality dominated
Claudius's last years. Her position, openly
influential in a manner unlike any previous empress,
was recognized by those attuned to imperial
politics, and she appears more and more prominently
in official inscriptions and coins. In 50 the Senate
voted her the title "Augusta," the first prominent
imperial woman to hold this title since Livia -- and
the latter had only held it after Augustus's death.
She greeted foreign embassies to the emperor at Rome
from her own tribunal, and those greetings were
recorded in official documents; she also wore a
gold-embroidered military cloak at official
functions. It is a sign of her overt influence that
a new colony on the Rhine bore her
name.[[22]]Agrippina's powerful position facilitated
the advancement of her son Domitius and was, in
turn, strengthened by it. Claudius already had a
natural son, Britannicus, who was still a minor.
Domitius, at 13, was three years older. Now Claudius
began to advance Domitius through various signs of
favor, the most important being his adoption as
Claudius's son on 25 February AD 50. Henceforth
Domitius was known as Nero Claudius Drusus
Germanicus Caesar and known to posterity simply as
"Nero". But Claudius openly advanced Nero in other
ways, too: the emperor held the consulship in 51,
which was the year Nero took the "toga of manhood,"
and that event was itself staged several months
before the customary age for Roman teenagers; Nero
was granted imperium proconsulare outside the city,
addressed the Senate, appeared with Claudius at
circus games (while Britannicus appeared still in
the toga of a minor), and was hailed as "Leader of
the Youth" (princeps iuventutis) on the coinage; in
AD 53 Nero married Claudius's daughter,
Octavia.[[23]] All of these are sure signs of
preference in the ever-unstable imperial succession
schemes. The main difficulty for modern scholars
lies in how to explain Claudius's favoring of Nero
over his natural son, Britannicus; the reasons
remain a matter of intense debate.[[24]]
No matter what the reasons were, there can be little
doubt that Nero, despite his tender age, had been
clearly marked out as Claudius's successor.
Agrippina, according to Tacitus, now decided it was
time to dispose of Claudius to allow Nero to take
over. The ancient accounts are confused -- as is
habitual in the cases of hidden and dubious deaths
of emperors -- but their general drift is that
Claudius was poisoned with a treated mushroom, that
he lingered a while and had to be poisoned a second
time before dying on 13 October 54 A.D. At noon that
same day, the sixteen-year-old Nero was acclaimed
emperor in a carefully orchestrated piece of
political theater. Already familiar to the army and
the public, he faced no serious challenges to his
authority.[[25]]
Claudius and the Empire
The invasion and annexation of Britain was by far
the most important and significant event in
Claudius's reign. But several other issues deserve
attention: his relationship with and treatment of
the aristocracy, his management of the provinces and
their inhabitants, and his judicial practices, and
his building activities. Before looking at these
subjects, however, we should note that the
long-lived notion that Claudius initiated a coherent
policy of centralization in the Roman Empire --
evidenced in the centralization of provincial
administration and judicial actions, in the creation
of a departmental bureaucracy, his interference in
financial affairs, and so on -- has been decisively
disproven by a recent biography of Claudius.[[26]]
Whatever actions Claudius took in regard to the
various wings of government, he did so without any
unifying policy of centralization in mind.
Claudius's relationship with the Senate did not get
off to a good start -- given the nature of his
succession and the early revolt of Scribonianus with
its ensuing show trials -- and it seems likely that
distrust of the aristocracy is what impelled
Claudius to elevate the role of his freedmen. During
his reign, however, Claudius made efforts to
conciliate Rome's leading council, but he also
embarked on practices that redounded to his
detriment, especially those of sponsoring the
entrance men considered unworthy into the Order and
hearing delicate cases behind closed doors (in
camera). In the last analysis, the figures speak for
themselves: 35 senators and several hundred Knights
were driven to suicide or executed during the reign.
The posthumous vilification of Claudius in the
aristocratic tradition also bespeaks a deep
bitterness and indicates that, ultimately,
Claudius's relationship with the Senate showed
little improvement over time. His reviving and
holding the censorship in 47-48 is typical of the
way the relationship between Senate and emperor
misfired: Claudius, no doubt, thought he was
adhering to ancient tradition, but the
emperor-censor only succeeded in eliciting odium
from those he was assessing.[[27]]
Claudius was remembered (negatively) by tradition as
being noticeably profligate in dispensing grants of
Roman citizenship to provincials; he also admitted
"long-haired" Gauls into the senatorial order, to
the displeasure of the snobbish incumbents. Both of
these practices demonstrate his concern for fair
play and good government for the provinces, despite
his largely sedentary reign: under Claudius are
attributed the first issues of standing orders
(mandata) from emperor to governor.[[28]] In the
organization of the provinces, Claudius appears to
have preferred direct administration over client
kingship. Under him the kingdoms of Mauretania,
Lycia, Noricum, and Thrace were converted into
provinces. Stable kingdoms, such as Bosporus and
Cilicia, were left untouched. A good example of the
pattern is Herod Agrippa I. This client prince had
grown up at Rome and had been awarded tetrarchic
lands in Galilee by Gaius (Caligula). As we saw
above, he had been involved in the accession of
Claudius and, as a reward for services rendered, he
was granted Judaea and Samaria in addition to his
former holdings. He fell from grace, however, when
he suspiciously extended Jerusalem's walls and
invited other eastern kings to a conference at
Tiberias. He died suddenly in 44 A.D., after which
his former kingdom again came under direct Roman
rule.[[29]] One feature
of Claudius's reign that the sources particularly
criticize is his handling of judicial matters. While
he was certainly diligent in attending to hearings
and court proceedings -- he was constantly present
in court and heard cases even during family
celebrations and festal days -- the sources accuse
him of interfering unduly with cases, of not
listening to both sides of a case, of making
ridiculous and/or savage rulings, and of hearing
delicate cases in closed-door private sessions with
only his advisors present. The most celebrated and
infamous of the latter cases is that of Valerius
Asiaticus, the Gallic ex-consul and one-time friend
of Claudius, who fell from grace in 47, reputedly at
Messalina's instigation. His case was heard in the
emperor's bedroom and Asiaticus was forced to
suicide. Even if a survey of surviving rulings by
Claudius do not show him making silly decisions, his
judicial practices caught such attention that
Seneca's Apocolocyntosis ends with a courtroom scene
with Claudius as the accused: he is not allowed to
make his defence, is convicted, and condemned to be
a powerless courtroom clerk. Such an image must have
been most pleasing to the senatorial
imagination.[[30]]
Finally, there is Claudius's building activities.
Public building was de rigueur for Roman emperors,
and ancient accounts of individual reigns routinely
include mention of imperial munificence. Matters
hydraulic account for Claudius's greatest
constructional achievements, in the form of a new
aqueduct for the city of Rome, a new port at Portus
near Ostia, and the draining of the Fucine Lake. The
sources are at pains to highlight the almost
catastrophic outcome of the latter project, but its
scale cannot be denied. Suetonius's assessment that
"his public works were grandiose and necessary
rather than numerous" is entirely correct[[31]].
Conclusion
Robert Graves' fictional characterization of
Claudius as an essentially benign man with a keen
intelligence has tended to dominate the wider
public's view of this emperor. Close study of the
sources, however, reveals a somewhat different kind
of man. In addition to his scholarly and cautious
nature, he had a cruel streak, as suggested by his
addiction to gladiatorial games and his fondness for
watching his defeated opponents executed.[[32]] He
conducted closed-door (in camera ) trials of leading
citizens that frequently resulted in their ruin or
deaths -- an unprecedented and tyrannical pattern of
behavior. He had his wife Messalina executed, and he
personally presided over a kangaroo court in the
Praetorian Camp in which many of her hangers-on lost
their lives. He abandoned his own son Britannicus to
his fate and favored the advancement of Nero as his
successor. While he cannot be blamed for the
disastrous way Nero's rule turned out, he must take
some responsibility for putting that most unsuitable
youth on the throne. At the same time, his reign was
marked by some notable successes: the invasion of
Britain, stability and good government in the
provinces, and successful management of client
kingdoms. Claudius, then, is a more enigmatic figure
than the other Julio-Claudian emperors: at once
careful, intelligent, aware and respectful of
tradition, but given to bouts of rage and cruelty,
willing to sacrifice precedent to expediency, and
utterly ruthless in his treatment of those who
crossed him. Augustus's suspicion that there was
more to the timid Claudius than met the eye was more
than fully borne out by the events of his unexpected
reign.
BIBLIOGRAPHY (see also the bibliographies for Gaius
and Nero)
- Barrett, A. A. Agrippina: Sex, Power, and
Politics in the Early Empire. New Haven, 1996.
- Braund, D. Augustus to Nero: A Sourcebook on
Roman History, 31 BC - A.D. 68. London, 1985.
- Eck, W., A. Caballos, and F. Fernández. Das
Senatusconsultum de Cn. Pisone Patre. Munich,
1996.
- Ehrhardt, C. "Messalina and the Succession
to Claudius." Antichthon 12 (1978): 51-77.
- Sherk, R. K. The Roman Empire: Augustus to
Hadrian. Cambridge, 1988.
- Levick, B. Claudius. New Haven, 1990.
- Momigliano, A. Claudius: The Emperor and his
Achievement.2 Oxford, 1961.
- Schwartz, D. R. Agrippa I: The Last King of
Judaea. Tübingen, 1990.
- Scramuzza, V. M. The Emperor Claudius.
London, 1940.
- Sherwin-White, A. N. The Roman Citizenship2.
Oxford, 1973.
- Smallwood, E. M. Documents Illustrating the
Principates of Gaius, Claudius, and Nero.
Cambridge, 1967.
- Strocka, V.M. (ed.) Die Regierungszeit des
Claudius. Mainz 1993.
- Sutherland, C. H. V. Coinage in Roman
Imperial Policy. London, 1951.
- ________. The Roman Imperial Coinage. Vol.
1,2 London, 1982. (= RIC)
- Talbert, R. J. A. The Senate of Imperial
Rome. Princeton, 1984.
- Vivo, A. de. Claudio e Tacito: Storia e
codificazione letteraria. Naples, 1980.
- Wellesley, K. "Can You Trust Tacitus?" GaR 1
(1954): 13-33.
- Wiseman, T.P. Flavius Josephus: Death of an
Emperor. Exeter 1991.
NOTES
[[1]] The main ancient literary sources for
Claudius's reign are: Tac. Ann. 11-12; Dio
59.1-60(61).4; Seneca, Apocolocyntosis; Suet.
Claudius. Supplementary information is found in
Josephus, and inscriptions and coins are collected
in Smallwood, Documents (many of the latter's
entries are translated in Braund or Sherk). Birth:
Suet. Claud. 2.1.
[[2]] Defects: Suet. Claud. 2.1-2. Claudius may have
suffered from cerebral palsy, but medical diagnoses
in the absence of physical remains and at a distance
of 2,000 years are not the soundest.
[[3]] Antonia, reports Suetonius [Claud. 3.2], used
to call him "a half-formed monster" and berated
fools as "more stupid than my son Claudius." These
assessments may well derive from the imperial
archives, to which Suetonius had access. For
citations from Augustus's correspondence that reveal
a more balanced view of the young Claudius, see
Suet. Claud. 4. Recent confirmation of Claudius's
low status in the dynasty comes from the SC de Cn.
Pisone Patre (AD 20): in the lengthy praises of
members of Germanicus's family, Claudius,
Germanicus's brother, is barely mentioned (line 148)
; see W. Eck et al., Das Senatusconsultum de Cn.
Pisone Patre (Munich, 1996), ll. 136-50.
[[4]] He did hold an augural priesthood, but nothing
else. The flimsiness of Augustus's bequest to him,
in naming him an heir in the third degree among
complete strangers, is a further indication of his
almost total marginalization from the center of the
dynasty, see Suet. Claud. 4.7.
[[5]] Suet. Claud. 3.1, 41-42. Among his works,
which were composed in Greek and Latin and none of
which survive, were: 43 books of Roman history, 21
books of Etruscan history, and 8 on Carthaginian; a
book on philology; a rhetorical defence of Cicero;
and an autobiography in 8 books. The latter have
been fictionalized by Robert Graves in his masterly
novels "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the God."
[[6]] Suetonius (Claud.5-6) records various
incidental honors and respects paid to him from
various quarters, such as his representation on two
occasions of the equestrian order as their patron.
However, as he was an under-utilized and therefore
accessible member of the imperial house, it would
have been more surprising had some party not
attempted to use him as an avenue of approach into
more powerful inner circles.
[[7]] Consulship and rough treatment under Gaius:
Suet. Claud. 7-9.
[[8]] Suet. Claud. 10; Dio 60.1.2-3a. Josephus (AJ
19.212-20) is largely in agreement, but unwittingly
contradicts an earlier passage in his work (see next
note). Another possibility (see Scramuzza, 56-57) is
that Josephus in AJ 19.212-20 is portraying the
sequel of the events he describes in AJ 10.162-65.
[[9]] The tradition of
the "active Guard" is preserved in Jos. AJ
19.162-65. [[10]] The
danger here is that we enter a pattern of circular
reasoning: because Claudius was involved in the
assassination and his own accession, he suppressed
the evidence and put out the "hapless accession"
story; therefore, the absence of evidence for his
active involvement is to be read as proof of it!
Levick (29-39) skirts this sort of logic, but falls
short of endorsing it.
[[11]] Suet. Claud. 10.1-3; Dio 60.1.3a; Jos. AJ
19.229, BJ 2.206-7.
[[12]] Tribunes: Jos. AJ 19.229-35; Herod Agrippa:
Jos. AJ 19.239-45.
[[13]] Suet. Claud. 10.3; Dio 60.1.4 (tribunes),
60.8.2 (allusion to Herod Agrippa's role).
Josephus's account of these Roman events, in fact,
is part of an extended, self-contained subdivision
of his AJ that could easily be entitled "The
Adventures of Herod Agrippa Among the Romans." There
is just cause to doubt the degree of prominence he
affords Herod in these events, but that the Jewish
prince played some role is hardly to be doubted.
[[14]] Depleted Senate: Jos. AJ 19.248-49.
Senatorial military strength and actions: Suet.
Claud. 10.4; Jos. AJ 19.188, 242, BJ 2.205.
Desertions: Dio 60.1.4; Jos. AJ 19.259-60, BJ
2.211-12. The most likely reason for the sudden
desertion of the Senate's troops late on 24 January
was not fear of a restored Republic or an
unwillingness to fight their comrades (as Josephus
claims in the AJ and BJ, locc. citt., respectively),
but the announcement on the evening of that day of
Claudius's huge donative to the urban and provincial
troops (Jos. AJ 19.247, Suet. Claud. loc. cit.).
[[15]] Suet. Claud. 11.1; Dio 60.3.4; Jos. AJ
19.268-71. Chaerea had virtually ensured his own
death by insisting that Claudius be killed along
with Gaius. [[16]]
Scribonianus's rebellion: Suet. Claud. 13.2; Dio
60.15-16; Tac. Hist. 1.89, 2.75, Ann. 12.52.2. The
invasion of Britain has been analyzed in minute
detail by many British scholars: e.g., S. Frere,
Britannia,3 (London, 1987), 16-80; J. Peddie,
Invasion: The Roman Conquest of Britain (New York,
1987); P. Salway, Roman Britain (Oxford, 1981),
65-99; G. Webster and D. Dudley, The Roman Conquest
of Britain,2 (London, 1973). Claudius's initial
objective may have been the annexation of the
southern shoreline only; see Levick, 137-48.
[[17]] The bombastic inscription from his (lost)
triumphal arch, now in a courtyard of the Musei
Capitolini in Rome, declares that "he received the
surrender of eleven British kings who had been
defeated without loss in battle, and was the first
to bring barbarian peoples from across the Ocean
under the sway of the Roman people" (CIL 6.920 = ILS
216). There were other military actions. Claudius
inherited a war in Mauretania from Gaius's reign
and, once fighting subsided, organized the former
kingdom into two provinces (Mauretania Tingitana and
Caesariensis) perhaps as early as AD 43; he subdued
trouble in Lycia and annexed the region as a
province, probably around AD 47 or 48; and he saw
fighting along the Rhine and Danube frontiers; for
all this, see Levick, 149-61. By the end of his
reign, he had been hailed as imperator twenty-seven
times (see, e.g., CIL 6.1256 = ILS 218), more than
any emperor until Constantine the Great.
[[18]] On the imperial freedmen, see Levick, 53-79;
Scramuzza, 5-34. Claudius's relations with the
aristocracy: Levick, 93-103. Narcissus and the
legions: Dio 60.19.2-3. A classic example of the
growing power of the freedmen is Claudius's
abolition of the senatorial post of quaestor
Ostiensis and its replacement with a freedman
procurator portus Ostiensis in 44; see Suet. Claud.
24.2. [[19]] Messalina
was Claudius's third wife: previous unions with
Plautia Urgulanilla and Aelia Paetina had failed for
various reasons; see Suet. Claud. 26.1-2.
Messalina's influence is indicated by her appearance
on the obverse of coins of Claudius's reign (where
one would expect the head of the emperor), or in the
cameo now in Paris depicting Messalina, Octavia, and
Britannicus. Messalina's excesses are reflected in
such sources as Sen. Apoc., passim and Juv. Sat. 6
and 10. [[20]]
Messalina's fall: Tac. Ann. 11.26-37; Suet. Claud.
26; Dio 60(61).31.1-5; Sen. Oct. 257-61.
[[21]] Timing of marriage: Tac. Ann. 12.6-8.
Agrippina's life and connections: Barrett,
Agrippina, 1-94 (before marriage to Claudius).
[[22]] Augusta: Dio 60(61).33.2a. Greeting
ambassadors: Tac. Ann. 12.37.5; Dio 60(61).33.7.
Cloak: Pliny HN 33.63, Dio 60(61).33.3. Colony: Tac.
Ann. 12.27.1-2. Tacitus, typically, contrives the
most biting aphorism to describe Agrippina's
ascendancy: "she presided over an almost masculine
servitude" (adductum et quasi virile servitium --
Ann. 12.7.5). [[23]]
Adoption: Tac. Ann. 12.25; Suet. Claud. 27, Nero 7;
Dio 60(61).32.22. Toga virilis and public
appearances: Tac. Ann. 12.41-42; Suet. Nero 7; Dio
60(61).32.5, 33.2c, 33.9. Imperium proconsulare:
Tac. Ann. 12.41.2. Princeps Iuventutis: C.H.V.
Sutherland, Coinage in Roman Imperial Policy
(London, 1951), pp.143-44 and id., RIC 126 (nos. 75.
80, 82) (many of these coins also celebrate
Agrippina independently of Claudius -- e.g.,
Sutherland, Coinage, 146 and id., RIC, 125 [no. 75]
-- a sure sign of her overt influence). Marriage to
Octavia: Tac. Ann. 12.58.1; Dio 60(61).33.11.
[[24]] Tacitus is unequivocal in attributing Nero's
advancement to Agrippina's efforts (studiis matris
at Ann. 12.9.2). Modern attempts to counter this
judgment (e.g., Scramuzza, 91-92) are unconvincing,
though Barrett's (Agrippina, 95-142) portrayal of
Agrippina and Claudius acting in concert has its
attractions. Tacitus portrays Pallas, Agrippina's
ally, as persuading Claudius to advance Nero for
reasons of state, slyly appealing to the sort of
historical precedents he knew would appeal to
Claudius's antiquarian sensibilities (Tac. Ann.
12.25). It is noteworthy that in his epigraphically
preserved speech to Lugdunum (dated to AD 48, and
thus before Nero was a factor), Claudius had
referred to just such precedents regarding monarchic
succession (Smallwood, Documents, no. 369.8-27).
Levick (69-79) argues for the "pairing" of
Britannicus and Nero in a joint-succession scheme
she sees extending back to Augustus. However, her
"dynastic collegiality" format for the imperial
succession is rather thin for evidence and,
tellingly, was not realized even once when power
changed hands in the first century AD. Barrett
(Agrippina, loc. cit.) argues that Claudius intended
to promote Nero from the outset, since the prince
could claim direct descent from Augustus and that
this claim buttressed his own regime. This position
seems a little stretched, since Claudius must have
known that to do so would result in Britannicus's
death (as indeed it did, within weeks of Nero's
accession; see Tac. Ann. 13.15-17). Another
possibility, little more than mentioned in the
modern authorities but entirely possible, is that
Claudius saw some flaws in Britannicus that turned
him toward Nero (Tac. Ann. 13.16.5).
[[25]] Death of Claudius: Tac. Ann. 12.64-67; Suet.
Claud. 43-44; Dio 60(61).34.1-3. Scramuzza (92-93)
believes that Claudius died naturally, and Barrett
(Agrippina, 139-42) leans in the same direction, on
the basis that the confused and conflicting accounts
of our sources make murder unlikely. Levick (76-77),
while stating that murder cannot be proven,
nonetheless finds Claudius's death altogether too
timely to have been natural. The aging emperor had
fallen ill frequently in the years leading up to his
death, but the fortuitous timing of his death is
indeed highly suspicious.
[[26]] Proponents of centralization: e.g.,
Momigliano, passim; H.H. Scullard, From the Gracchi
to Nero5 (London, 1985), 292-95. Disproven: Levick,
81-91. [[27]]
Consulting the House: Claudius's record of
attendance at meetings of the Senate is among best
for the emperors; see R.J.A. Talbert, The Senate of
Imperial Rome (Princeton, 1984), 174-84, esp.
176-77. Conciliatory gestures: he declared amnesty
for senators implicated in Gaius's death (Dio
60.3.5-4.2); he adopted a general demeanor of
deference to the House (Suet. Claud. 12.1-2, 35.1);
he rose to greet consuls and dressed unassumingly
for meetings (Dio 60.6.1, 9); and so on. Unworthy
senators: e.g., Tac. Ann. 11.20.4-21.4. Numbers of
dead: Sen., Apoc. 14.1 (who numbers 35 senators and
221 equites); Suet. Claud. 29.2 (35 senators and
over 300 equites). Censorship: Tac. Ann. 11.13,
Suet. Claud. 16.
[[28]] Excessive grants of citizenship: Sen. Apoc.
3.3; his grant of citizenship en masse to the Alpine
tribe of the Anauni (CIL 14.85 = ILS 206) is a
particularly famous example. Levick (165) has
pointed out, however, that in the indices of
provincial citizens "Claudii" are far outweighed by
"Iulii" or "Flavii," suggesting that the tradition
has exaggerated this tendency of Claudius's; see
also see A.N. Sherwin-White The Roman Citizenship2
(Oxford, 1973), 237-50. Admission of Gauls to the
senate: Tac. Ann. 11.23-25; Smallwood, Documents,
no. 369 (see also K. Wellesley, "Can You Trust
Tacitus?", GaR 1[1954]: 13-33). Mandata: Levick,
164. [[29]] Career of
Herod Agrippa I: D.R. Schwartz, Agrippa I: The Last
King of Judaea (Tübingen, 1990); above, nn. 12-13.
[[30]] Hearing cases: Suet. Claud. 14, Dio 60.4.3,
17.1. Suetonius (Claud. 14-15) sums up his judicial
failings with many examples; see also Dio 60.5.6-7.
Closed hearings: Tac. Ann. 11.2.1, 13.4.2. Valerius
Asiaticus and survey of rulings: Levick, 61-63 (with
sources in notes) and 123-26, respectively. Seneca:
Apoc. 12-14 (where there are many echoes of
Suetonius's charges).
[[31]] Suet. Claud. 20 (quote at 20.1: opera magna
potius et necessaria quam multa perfecit). See also
F.C. Bourne, The Public Works of the Julio-Claudians
and Flavians (Princeton, 1946), 42-48; Levick,
108-11. [[32]] Cruelty:
Suet. Claud. 34. |